By Our Reporter
SHILLONG, Dec 23: Trashing Meghalaya government’s claims of having reached a monumental milestone by surpassing the national average of connections in the Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM), the state BJP on Saturday declared the performance of the state below par insofar as JJM implementation is concerned.
A few days ago, the Conrad K. Sangma-led government said it provided JJM connections to 72.37% of the targeted households.
“The implementation is not as per the expectations. The people are not happy with the work being done in the villages. We verified and found their complaints are genuine,” said Tura MDC and state BJP vice-president, Bernard N Marak.
“In some places, they are using MGNREGS tanks for the JJM connections. In some places, they have connected the taps and the points but there is no water while in some other places, there is no connection from the intake points,” he said.
“The pipes are fixed in many places but there is no water and in some places, they have repaired or built the tank but there is no water from the intake point,” he added.
“Practically, the whole idea behind implementing the JJM seems to have been defeated at the grassroots and village levels because people are not getting water as has been visualised by Prime Minister Narendra Modi,” Marak said.
Claiming a 72.37% achievement under JJM in 2023, the state government said it signified a remarkable transformation from a mere 0.7% of households with a tap water connection in 2019. It said the connection to 4,71,544 households was a testament to the dedicated efforts of the government.
As of August 15, 2019, Meghalaya had 4,550 households with tap water connections. The number of connections is nearing the 5 lakh mark today.